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Shadowflight
Since her best friend died, Lindsay has stopped being happy. She spends each day of the summer holiday alone on the cliffs, near the soaring gulls. When Darren tries to be friends, his incessant cheerfulness and joke-telling seem like betrayal to Lindsay. Escaping Darren's irritating company, Lindsay runs into a mysterious shop. The owner is an old, blind Indian, Bapujee. He feels her sadness, and when she is drawn to an amazing shadow-puppet in his window, he lends it to her. Lindsay's teacher suggests that their class give Lorna a special tribute using shadow figures lit from behind. Their feelings become public while they themselves stay hidden. Darren refuses to join in, but Lindsay discovers that be is making a shadow puppet with Bapujee. His seagull image flying across the screen represents Lorna's last dream. Lindsay realizes that Darren has been trying to tell her that he's unhappy, too. As the magical shadows begin to heal their sadness, the class find there are different ways of grieving.
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2001
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March 11, 2024
FOUND AND READ ON OPEN LIBRARY
With United Kingdom (but more to the point Scottish) author (and artist) Franzseka G. Ewart’s 2001 middle grade novella Shadowflight, ever since main protagonist and first person narrator Lindsay’s best friend Lorna died as a result of a motor vehicle accident (while she was walking home from a party celebrating the end of the school year), Lindsay has been beset with and by her grief and sense of loss, with and by her all encompassing loneliness, spending her summer school holidays alone on the seaside cliffs near the soaring gulls, thinking of Lorna, missing Lorna, feeling not only sadness but also intense anger, which surprises her but is actually part of the grieving process (and that I do certainly majorly appreciate how Ewart ingeniously and wonderfully uses her first person narrator, uses grieving and struggling Lindsay to specifically point this out in Shadowflight, namely that grieving comes in many different guises, including feeling enraged).
Furthermore but for me quite importantly and wonderfully, that in Shadowflight, Lorna's accident, her being run over by a car and later dying in hospital of her injuries are very quickly and almost simplistically related, while some readers might perhaps require and desire more textual details and information regarding the latter, I for one totally appreciate the verbal brevity here, since with Shadowflight being a first person narration, how Lindsay is shown as explaining the facts of Lorna accident and death with only a few basic sentences and words, it to and for me very much reinforces the experienced emotional trauma and turmoil and that she, that Lindsay is not able to even talk all that much about and describe what happened to Lorna, that she is keeping everything inside, bottled up and unable to find release (and with in particular my inner child absolutely adoring, really enjoying Lindsay's voice in Shadowflight, that Franzeska G. Ewart makes her main and narrating protagonist textually sound like a tween, like an eleven year old girl experiencing major emotional trauma and not being able and willing to verbalise and to bring into the open all of this and thankfully never like an eleven year old child sounding like the author and acting mostly like Ewart's mouthpiece).
Now when schoolmate and class clown Darren encounters Lindsay on the beach in Shadowflight, after his incessant joke-telling attempts become both hugely annoying and also seem like a betrayal of her grief and her pain (although Lindsay later begins to understand and to realise that for Darren, making jokes is in fact his way of dealing with, of being able to tolerate and cope with Lorna's passing just like Lindsay is trying to swallow up all of her emotional trauma and becomes unsociable and hermit like), running away from Darren always wanting to tell his jokes, Lindsay comes across a mysterious shop on the High Street of her town, where the owner (an old, blind East Indian man named Bapujee) seems to perceive and feel Lindsay's sadness and lets her borrow an old made of leather shadow puppet named Bima (to whom Lindsay feels connected as soon as she spots Bima in the shop's window).
And then, when at the beginning of the new school year, Lindsay's art teacher Mrs. Donovan (who recognises what Bima is, that Bima is an Indonesian shadow puppet known as a wayang kulit and used for performances combining ritual, lessons and entertainment) suggests that since everyone in Lorna's class is obviously still very much grieving her demise, the class should give Lorna a special tribute using hand made shadow puppet figures lit from behind (like it is done in Bali, in Indonesia), the resulting shadow puppet theatre performance in Shadowflight not only textually provides a beautiful and student created/performed memorial to and for Lorna, but is also openly, healingly showing her classmates' often repressed emotions both positive and painful, having them become public via means of the shadow puppets being used while the students themselves remain hidden and anonymous (allowing for example Lindsay to show with a heart shaped shadow puppet how her heart was broken by Lorna's death and that she is learning to mend her sadness with fond and loving remembrances and her heart being brought back together, and that Darren, although at first refusing to join in, makes a shadow puppet of a seagull with Bapujee to represent Lorna's dream of flying and with the many different shadow puppet images being shown in Shadowflight therefore demonstrating that there are many different ways of grieving and that it is important to bring feelings of trauma and sadness out and to fill soul and thoughts with memories and tenderness).
Five solid and appreciative stars for Shadowflight from my inner child (and yes, she does majorly love love love how in a novella of less than one hundred pages in length, author Franzeska G. Ewart has managed to not only create a poignantly heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful and always delightfully lovely storyline about grief, loss and how to use shadow puppets to both cope and even more importantly to rise above and beyond trauma, but has also textually created characters who are nuanced, rounded and with quite bit of emotional depth, and not to mention that I do want to now experience Indonesian shadow puppets and performances myself). And while my older adult reading self does have to acknowledge that with Bapujee, Ewart is presenting, is featuring a bit of potential ethnic stereotyping, well, my inner child's reading and textual joy regarding Shadowflight and the wonderful and delightful combination of Franzeska G. Ewalt's words and her accompanying and nicely muted black and white artwork cannot and will not make me consider less than five stars for Shadowflight (and that while I found and read Shadowflight on Open Library, I am now most definitely very much keen on obtaining this book for my personal library, for my own bookshelves).
With United Kingdom (but more to the point Scottish) author (and artist) Franzseka G. Ewart’s 2001 middle grade novella Shadowflight, ever since main protagonist and first person narrator Lindsay’s best friend Lorna died as a result of a motor vehicle accident (while she was walking home from a party celebrating the end of the school year), Lindsay has been beset with and by her grief and sense of loss, with and by her all encompassing loneliness, spending her summer school holidays alone on the seaside cliffs near the soaring gulls, thinking of Lorna, missing Lorna, feeling not only sadness but also intense anger, which surprises her but is actually part of the grieving process (and that I do certainly majorly appreciate how Ewart ingeniously and wonderfully uses her first person narrator, uses grieving and struggling Lindsay to specifically point this out in Shadowflight, namely that grieving comes in many different guises, including feeling enraged).
Furthermore but for me quite importantly and wonderfully, that in Shadowflight, Lorna's accident, her being run over by a car and later dying in hospital of her injuries are very quickly and almost simplistically related, while some readers might perhaps require and desire more textual details and information regarding the latter, I for one totally appreciate the verbal brevity here, since with Shadowflight being a first person narration, how Lindsay is shown as explaining the facts of Lorna accident and death with only a few basic sentences and words, it to and for me very much reinforces the experienced emotional trauma and turmoil and that she, that Lindsay is not able to even talk all that much about and describe what happened to Lorna, that she is keeping everything inside, bottled up and unable to find release (and with in particular my inner child absolutely adoring, really enjoying Lindsay's voice in Shadowflight, that Franzeska G. Ewart makes her main and narrating protagonist textually sound like a tween, like an eleven year old girl experiencing major emotional trauma and not being able and willing to verbalise and to bring into the open all of this and thankfully never like an eleven year old child sounding like the author and acting mostly like Ewart's mouthpiece).
Now when schoolmate and class clown Darren encounters Lindsay on the beach in Shadowflight, after his incessant joke-telling attempts become both hugely annoying and also seem like a betrayal of her grief and her pain (although Lindsay later begins to understand and to realise that for Darren, making jokes is in fact his way of dealing with, of being able to tolerate and cope with Lorna's passing just like Lindsay is trying to swallow up all of her emotional trauma and becomes unsociable and hermit like), running away from Darren always wanting to tell his jokes, Lindsay comes across a mysterious shop on the High Street of her town, where the owner (an old, blind East Indian man named Bapujee) seems to perceive and feel Lindsay's sadness and lets her borrow an old made of leather shadow puppet named Bima (to whom Lindsay feels connected as soon as she spots Bima in the shop's window).
And then, when at the beginning of the new school year, Lindsay's art teacher Mrs. Donovan (who recognises what Bima is, that Bima is an Indonesian shadow puppet known as a wayang kulit and used for performances combining ritual, lessons and entertainment) suggests that since everyone in Lorna's class is obviously still very much grieving her demise, the class should give Lorna a special tribute using hand made shadow puppet figures lit from behind (like it is done in Bali, in Indonesia), the resulting shadow puppet theatre performance in Shadowflight not only textually provides a beautiful and student created/performed memorial to and for Lorna, but is also openly, healingly showing her classmates' often repressed emotions both positive and painful, having them become public via means of the shadow puppets being used while the students themselves remain hidden and anonymous (allowing for example Lindsay to show with a heart shaped shadow puppet how her heart was broken by Lorna's death and that she is learning to mend her sadness with fond and loving remembrances and her heart being brought back together, and that Darren, although at first refusing to join in, makes a shadow puppet of a seagull with Bapujee to represent Lorna's dream of flying and with the many different shadow puppet images being shown in Shadowflight therefore demonstrating that there are many different ways of grieving and that it is important to bring feelings of trauma and sadness out and to fill soul and thoughts with memories and tenderness).
Five solid and appreciative stars for Shadowflight from my inner child (and yes, she does majorly love love love how in a novella of less than one hundred pages in length, author Franzeska G. Ewart has managed to not only create a poignantly heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful and always delightfully lovely storyline about grief, loss and how to use shadow puppets to both cope and even more importantly to rise above and beyond trauma, but has also textually created characters who are nuanced, rounded and with quite bit of emotional depth, and not to mention that I do want to now experience Indonesian shadow puppets and performances myself). And while my older adult reading self does have to acknowledge that with Bapujee, Ewart is presenting, is featuring a bit of potential ethnic stereotyping, well, my inner child's reading and textual joy regarding Shadowflight and the wonderful and delightful combination of Franzeska G. Ewalt's words and her accompanying and nicely muted black and white artwork cannot and will not make me consider less than five stars for Shadowflight (and that while I found and read Shadowflight on Open Library, I am now most definitely very much keen on obtaining this book for my personal library, for my own bookshelves).
Displaying 1 of 1 review